How could we let it get this far? We were given a wonderful gift, a beautiful blue and green planet, just the right distance from it’s life giving star. It nurtured us, allowed us to grow and evolve into an amazingly advanced society and all it ever asked in return was that we do the same, allow it to grow and thrive along with us, a perfect symbiotic relationship.
But we failed.
Miserably.
Instead of nurturing our Mother planet, we abused her. We drilled deep into her to obtain the “energy source” hidden deep within. Then we burned that fuel and poisoned the air. We cut down her forests, harvesting the trees for our personal use and just assumed nature would somehow replenish these resources on it’s own. We drove several species of animals to the brink of extinction, piled our garbage into dumps and created new dumps every time we filled up an old one as well as many other crimes against our world.
Many people, from well respected scientists to concerned average citizens, spent decades trying to warn us about the consequences of our actions, but their protestations were dismissed by our leaders who said there was no evidence that we were damaging our environment. Global warming is a myth, they claimed. It’s not man made, just a natural occurrence. The business leaders that were pumping toxins into the atmosphere laughed at the pleas to stop, to look for ways to power our communities that did not harm our environment.
And so we went on polluting.
The warnings continued to go unheeded.
And now, it’s too late.
Our planet is ruined. The atmosphere has almost been entirely obliterated. Our once lush, green forests are now barren wastelands. Our once crystal blue oceans are now too toxic to maintain life. Massive droughts and famines have dwindled our population, once numbered in the billions, to a mere fraction of a percent. We now survive on a stock of emergency supplies that is rapidly depleting. There is no way to undo what we have done. Those of us that remain must live with the horrors of what we have done for the rest of our lives.
There is only one hope left.
One chance to preserve our dying species.
One chance to start over.
Astronomers were able to locate another planet much like our own. Another beautiful blue green marble. It’s atmosphere is nearly identical to the one we so selfishly destroyed. It’s just the right distance from it’s star to maintain life. There are even creatures there that greatly resemble us. It would be the perfect new home. All we need to do is find a way to get there. It is a great distance away, none of our space expeditions have ever gone so far before, but we either find a way to get there or stay here and die.
So government scientists and engineers were set the task of developing a ship that could carry us there. It’s been many years since they started and today it was announced that they’ve finally achieved their goal. The team managed to craft a small fleet of ships, enough to carry whats left of our people, that are able to bend space and time in a way that will cut a trip that would otherwise take centuries to complete down to a few weeks. They tried to explain how it works, few understood, no one cared. We just want to get off of this sad remnant. We just want to live again.
I have mixed feelings about leaving. Don’t get me wrong, I want to live. More than that, I want my children to live. But how can we destroy the planet that gave us life and then just leave her to rot? It’s our fault that she’s in this state. How ungrateful can we possibly be? Yet more thoughts that will haunt me for all eternity.
Our leaders say they have a plan for what to do when we arrive on the new planet, they’re all too afraid to use the phrase “if we make it there.”. The planet is much too far away to contact the inhabitants before we leave. They say the ships will land in a remote part of the world. From there our leaders will make contact with whoever leads the native people and work out a plan with them to integrate our people into their society. If the people are hostile to us we will pretend to leave the planet and then secretively return and try to blend in on our own. The ships are equipped with cloaking devices, so our arrival and potential second arrival should go undetected. It doesn’t sound like much of a plan to me, but we really don’t have a choice, we absolutely depend on this planet for our survival.
The ships leave in a couple of months so everyone is preparing for the journey. We have to travel light, just the bare essentials, so preparing mostly means saying goodbye to our homes, to the lives we had here, to everything we have ever known.
We’re all trying to imagine what lies ahead of us. What is this planet like? Will the people be welcoming, or will they force us to leave? Worse, will they capture us? Hide us away? Perform experiments on us? Execute us?
I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.
The leaders are trying to gather as much information about this planet as they can. The more we know about it, the better we’ll be able to fit in. While they’ve been able to gather plenty of information about the location and environment, they’ve only been able to come up with bits and pieces of information about the people themselves from intercepting transmissions from them. Apparently, the inhabitants of this planet call themselves humans. They are divided into many different countries and cultures, which should hopefully give us more opportunities to find a place where we’ll be accepted. They call the planet they live on Earth. I like the sound of that name, it sounds so warm and welcoming, like our own planet once was. Other than that, we don’t know much about this new world.
The journey my people are about to take is the most important, and most dangerous, journey in our history. There’s no telling what we’ll find when we reach our destination. I hope we survive the trip and find a way to become part of the Earthlings’ society, but most of all, I hope we can help prevent Earth and the human race from meeting the same fate as our home and people have.
